Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Flour Power!

Sometimes we just need to take a step back from the world, ignore the junk mail and the traffic lights and the alarm clocks and the hydrogenated oils, and just let ourselves be: Allow ourselves to merely exist in the world, enjoy our surroundings and just enjoy living.

It seems that the world continues to race by without ever providing us a chance to truly breathe, to appreciate our lives for what they are, and to love ourselves for being ourselves.

In the days leading up to my friends’ college departures, each second of my life is consumed by an ominous ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. I hear it as I walk home from work, wash the dishes, get dressed, open my mail, realizing that time continues to pass and the seconds become fewer and fewer until I am on my own. Every social occasion always ends with someone’s tearful goodbye as we realize months may pass before we see her again.

This afternoon I escaped the world. Whenever I walk by the giant bags of flour at Costco, I am completely tempted to split open the thin paper and toss the thin white powder in a flurry. Obviously, I value my membership at Costco far too much to achieve such a feat, but when divulging this fantasy to my friends, I realized that such a whimsical daydream was attainable.

And so was born The Flour Party.

With a host and her backyard in tow, a demand for all black clothing, and pounds and pounds of flour, of course, The Flour Party emerged. We congregated beneath the hot summer sun and before we had time to even create a set of rules, flour was smashed into ponytails, shoved up nostrils, caked into bellybuttons, lost down v-neck shirts. Flour coated our skin, our clothes, our hair; every crevice on our body was filled with white residue. Flour stuck to our teeth as we giggled and dumped flaky white piles on each other, flour blinded us and suffocated us as we tried to properly adorn every surface in the chalky powder. Laughter and shrieks remained our only form of communication as paste formed in our throats.

Words barely do justice to the ecstasy that was The Flour Party. The decidedly annual tradition ended with sprints through chilly water from the hose and the inevitable loss of hearing/sight/speech due to the excessive amount of irremovable flour stuck to our bodies. I left the festivities elated, unconcerned by the fact that my contacts were lying somewhere in the white-dusted grass, that my hair may forever sport a permanent white streak, or that I had just used some of my precious time doing something so completely purposeless.

Because sometimes we need this type of purposelessness, this nonsense and foolery to show us what life is all about. We need to loosen up, realize that life is about living, about loving and laughing, about enjoying who we are and who we’re with, and about just having an all around good time, and perhaps throwing a handful of flour in your best friend’s face every now and then.